


Before the Beginning and After the End

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 18:02:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6917569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane is young and out of options. Her only choice is to play the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Beginning and After the End

**Author's Note:**

> this was intended to be a much longer piece, and perhaps it still may be, but I'm cutting it short and pre-emptively publishing it for the purpose of ladystuck remix.

Her name’s Jane.

She’s young, only a few days old, but she already has everything a child growing up in this world could want.

She has a grandfather who loves her very much. A wise old man, with a gentle heart and a strong sense of humor. He cares for her. 

She has a dog, big and white and fluffy and kind to kids. The dog’s name is Halley, and when he crawls up on the big couch that’s the only one he’s allowed to sit on, her poppop will bring her there too. The wet, black nose tickles her stomach as the curious hound sniffs at the new little human in his house. It makes her giggle. 

Then, only a few days after she’s ‘born’, another comes in a similar fashion. The dog’s house is crushed, thankfully while it’s empty. It’s a small compensation, though, because next there’s two loud noises and red, red, red down her poppop’s shirt as he crumples to the ground.

Babies should not be allowed to dual wield flintlock pistols, as it usually makes for poor results. 

She doesn’t remember him, save for the way one remembers through stories they’ve heard.

There may have only been eight of them, but the good days ended there.

* * * 

She’s young, still only one digit to her age, and she tries to wear her grandfathers shoes both literally and metaphorically. She and her brother pursue the japery that’s in their family’s legend, because what else is there to do? It’s the small little acts of defiance their practical joking provides that gets them through the day. 

Even that doesn’t last long, though. Jake’s interests begin to differ from hers, he dreams of adventure, and the wealth and fame that would be the spoils of his expeditions. 

He tells her stories of faraway places he’s never seen while they pick the glass out of each other’s faces and rehearse what they’ll say to their tutor when he comes back tomorrow.

Fell down the stairs and crashed into the china cabinet, you know how clumsy we can be, Sir. It’s not like this is the first time. 

Their tutor doesn’t come the next day, though. They ask their grandmother. 

He was getting into my business, putting his nose where it didn’t belong. Didn’t think he was the right man for the job, so i sacked him. We’ll find someone else. 

She forces herself awake before the crack of dawn for the next few days, checking the newspaper before the witch can bring it in and carefully folding it back up so it looks untouched.

She sees the report of her old tutor’s murder after a few days of staking out. It was gristly, the police’s only lead being the three evenly spaced holes completely through his chest and out the other side.

You tell Jake. 

It was her. I know it was her, Jake. 

He asks Jane if she’s ever heard of the rare species footlong blue worms that’s native to Australia. 

She realizes she’s on her own with this. 

* * * 

“Halley!” he calls, patting his thighs to beckon their faithful companion. It sounds more like Harley when he says it nowadays. One blow to the head a bit too hard and his speech started to slur, like he was talking through molasses. If you squinted, it sounded a little bit like a British accent. 

He’s standing in her room, looking at the papers she has scattered about as she shoves them away. She doesn’t want him to see - he slips up too easily. He’s got one hand tangled through Halley’s long, white tufts, and the other curled tightly around the strap of a pack that looks decently full. 

She looks up at him.

“Jane, I love you dearly, but I have to go.” And the first thing her brain does is just shout NO as loudly as it can, right into her soul.

She has Halley, their impromptu guardian after the death of their grandfather and the abuse from the witch, and she has Jake. The only human she’s ever known well enough to love. 

Not like that, though. He’s her brother.

She doesn't love him like that.

She can’t.

She won’t. She tamps these feelings down with the rest of the emotions she can’t deal with and she turns herself into a powderkeg, waiting to go off, but mercifully there’s been no spark yet.

“Jake, you can’t leave. You. You can’t just leave me here!” The words tear out of her throat like sandpaper. 

“I’ve never planned on that, Jane.” He puts a hand on her shoulder, as comforting as it is condescending. 

He doesn’t know as much as she does about what their grandmother and her company have been doing behind closed doors. She stopped telling him a long time ago. It’s not like it helped in any way besides easing her personal burden. Besides, one person was far less likely to slip up than two. And even when he did know about the disgusting, incomprehensibly twisted things nanna Betty did, he didn’t seem to understand.

“Come with me,” he says. “Come with me and we can be free of this blasted hellhole! Can’t you imagine that, Jane? A life where we’re free and there are jungles to explore, and tombs to be plundered, and people to talk to. We barely leave this dang blasted house, can you really be content with that?”

No. She can’t be content with that, but she’s never been a dreamer, always a realist. If they leave, Betty will find them. She always finds what she’s looking for, and when the blood spills it’s never hers.

“Jake. I can’t go with you . . . and I don’t think you should leave either. It’s too dangerous.” 

Don’t leave me, she thinks. Jake is all Jane’s ever had. 

Jake is all Jane’s ever wanted. 

Jake wants so much more than Jane can give. 

“Danger?” He scoffs. “I don’t care about that! Don’t you flipping get it, Janey? We’re in plenty enough danger here, to be frank. you’d have to be absolutely barmy to think that we can’t handle the real world after what she’s put us through.”

But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know about the strings of murders the experiments in the laboratories the experiments on people adults and the elderly and oh god children, children younger than them. 

“She’ll kill us, Jake. If we leave, she’ll hunt us down and if she doesn’t kill us she’ll at least drag us back to a life that’s 10 times worse than the one we left!”

Jane’s never been more sure of anything she’s said in her entire life. He can’t go. She can’t go. 

They can’t just go. 

“Jane . . . I love you dearly,” don't say that, she thinks, you can’t say that to me now. “But I’m leaving. With or without you. And that’s final.”

His voice is mostly firm, but it wavers a little bit. This is hard for him too, she realizes.

Not hard enough. 

“Then you’re leaving without me.” How could he go through with this without her? They’ve never had anyone else. 

“I . . . understand, I suppose. We’ll just just be going, then.”

“You’re taking Halley!?”

“Well of course, Jane. A young man can’t just rightly wander into the big, wide world by himself! Every great adventurer has had a companion. I was hoping it could be you, but you’ve made your choice and I understand that.”

He talks in that infuriatingly calm, patronizing tone he uses when he wants to act like he’s the one being mature and responsible as he takes everything she’s ever loved and drags it to a certain death. 

“Just remember, Jane, I know you’ll do great thing. I believe in you.” He sets his hand on her shoulder and has the audacity to smile. 

She whacks him away with a little bit more force than is required but exactly as much is necessary. 

“Fine! Leave, go ahead and just completely abandon me and get yourself killed or tortured, I don’t care anymore. But if you leave, you better not come back!”

She feels her face getting hot and tears building up at the corners of her eyes. He’s unfazed, and with complete sincerity he just looks at her.

“Why would I want to?” and he actually doesn’t understand why this is the wrong thing to say. 

She picks up the closest thing she can get her hands hurls it at him as he turns to leave - it’s a globe, and a rather nice one at that. It shatters against her wall and the chunks of broken wood fall to the ground with the same lack of ceremony her brother’s abrupt departure had. 

He looks back at her, one more time.

“I wish you all of the luck in the world, Jane. Remember that.”

But he doesn’t, does he? Because he leaves. 

And that’s the last she ever sees of him. 

being 13 is a very bad age and she wished she could just go back to the simplicity of 12.

* * * 

She throws herself into a new craft. She’s always enjoyed baking passively, being more interested in the pranking legacy of her grandfather, and just recently developing a taste for investigation. Those aren’t really options, though, at least not now. If she ever wants to best the Baroness, she has to perfect the craft.

She knows she can be better. 

She turns out to be a natural.

Maybe some day it’ll be enough.


End file.
